Abstract: Absent a compelling rationale, there is little reason to create a new program of global studies in an already crowded academic landscape, nor much justification for re-allocating scarce (and often shrinking) human and material resources to this enterprise. Four propositions provide a necessary if insufficiently complete and comprehensive rationale for global studies programs. First, and increasingly, fundamental problems of deep and universal concern to humans everywhere can be resolved or managed only if they are addressed — simultaneously and synchronously — at local, national, regional, and global levels by relevant actors. Second, the scope of these global and globalizing problems evidences the emergence of a global society for the first time in the evolution of the species. Third, the description, explanation, and understanding of globalization, marked by globalizing problems of a world society, require dedicated interdisciplinary and interprofessional programs of study. The obverse to this proposition, fourth, is that, notwithstanding its many merits, the current diffuse and decentralized organization of educational programs and disciplinary units across the academy at all levels is ill-suited — in some instances a serious impediment — to the study of globalization and to the discovery of ways to employ and deploy the forces unleashed by globalization for human good or, conversely, to limit and frustrate the damage they do.
